Meetup? Meetup. The 7th of March, 06:00 PM ETS, so two weeks from now-ish.

- But you have to fill in those forms yourself! By the day after tomorrow!

- Oh, not a problem. They follow the same schema as the ones I had completed last year, and only need my signature at the end, once the dates are updated.

- They still need to be filled. By hand.

- Say no more, you've been hereby deputized!

And thus I took about a half of papers back to my desk, since that's not my ass on the line if they're late. As someone who managed to out-pedant local civil servants for so long they gave up, I feel the thrill of battle once more.

Wrote glowing summaries for my interns. It was pretty fun, hopefully for them too. They mostly spent those three weeks getting maths lessons only for me to say "Oh, geez, look at the time!", but I doubt anyone thinks this time was wasted. And they did help me with a project that's been on the back burner for almost five years now. I offered to help them extend this stuff and get it published, but don't expect to hear back until October/November. Can't blame them; summer's precious even if you have to work through it. And the weather has been super-mild so far, so that's even less incentive to stay inside and do maths.

Xenonauts 2 went out, and I'm in this in-between state of liking the new thing yet longing for all the mods that were left behind. The devs and community are cool, though, and I hope there won't be too much of a learning curve to port/write my stuff. Wouldn't mind a real modding API or something, so that people aren't learning through word of mouth or by dissecting the thing composed of loosely associated XML(?) files.

There's been some buzz recently about this thing. Apart from the usual "wait until it's replicated," or people bringing up recent retractions or hoaxes, I'd like to simply say that any paper on (a breakthrough in) superconductivity that doesn't include temperature-resistance curve is essentially worthless. Sure, you can go "doesn't resistance relate to Debye temperature, Bloch–Gruneisen model go brrr?," but one is an inferred quantity while the other is measured directly. Go with direct measurements, especially when they're as bloody standard as resistance.

It's November, dude.

I'm back on my feet, mostly. It'll probably take me the next month to regain comfort in walking, but that's to be expected. Opiate withdrawal was present, even with doctor's help and skipping doses towards the end, but nothing to write home about. Almost exactly like what I read about: four flu-like days with random bouts of unspecified pains and stomach problems. It's prolly a good thing I flushed the remaining pills, too.

It's good to be back, even approximately. You'd think I'd catch up on reading, but it didn't pan out. Went from "reading easily a page a minute" to "needed nine days to re-read Neuromancer," so thank god for audiobooks and text to speech synthesis.

I managed to spend entire September in travel without a hitch, and today fucked up my foot at home, slipping on some crap in the basement. Sprained ankle, have fractures in two metatarsals, had to crawl upstairs Gattaca style and get my ass to emergency room. I was almost there by car before remembering fucking Uber exists, so it's fair to say shock generally puts a decimal point in front of my IQ. But it's cool now, got the neighbor to bring the car back, and didn't need anything stronger than paracetamol so far.

Officially between jobs, and slayin' it.

It's bad enough with weirdos like me around.

But with 4chan and similar out there? That's a horrible idea.

I'm one of two people on the project who aren't actively sick with COVID or were exposed to COVID, and the other guy can't work the labs. Everyone's been vaccinated, so that's at least some small comfort, but holy shit if there hasn't been a worse time for this to happen. Not in a whiny entitled "why does this extra work happen to me!" but more like "we hit a snag, everyone's sick and unable to help even if they could, and I'm vastly under-qualified to be the de facto brains of this operation." And I could keep the things running, if they were running. Instead, I'm working back from the first principles to see why/if the model doesn't work, and since I never done gaseous phase reaction like that it's straining my grasp of statistical physics. Like, the kind of SP I've been using for the last three years was almost exclusively about inert things close to absolute zero, ya know?

Oddly, this side-project is the most 'lost' I've felt since the phd programme started, so I guess it's gonna be a good exercise. Sink or swim, bitch!

I did two tournament games this weekend, won both. Humility has its time and place, but I've outgrown this class. It's plain disrespectful for me to keep clogging those games. Gotta mobilize, advance, and move forward. Enough stalling.

I found a cheap place to practice the piano, they also have heaps of other instruments and the owners are this super-enthusiastic retiree couple. They offer lessons on pretty much everything they have around, too. I also went out on two dates, though neither was nearly as exciting. I choose to believe it says more about them than me, but all things considered, it's probably good I finally went out for something beyond work or groceries nonetheless.

I think I read it in Who Killed Homer? that in the USA, out of a million graduates, only about 600 were Classics majors. There are allegedly more professors than students in many places, and the story isn't much different in my corner of the world.

And it's a shame, but after dipping my toes into Greek and Latin, it's as lonely and thankless as physics while lacking the (worn-out if comparatively more accessible) argument that it has real-world applications. It's also as fulfilling as physics, though, which makes the current state that much more regrettable.

I went for a working weekend to Szczecin, meeting half-way with folks about a paper. Everything but the commute was great, the worst personal encounter I had there wouldn't register through the Warsaw Douchebag Background Radiation. It was also cool to finally meet everyone in person, first time with some. Easily the biggest colab I've been a part of, too. There's still some stuff to iron out, though we did the heavy lifting on-site.

But the commute was murder. 13 hours each way with an unmasked crowd in a bus, two attempts at stealing my luggage (jokes on you, it's mostly maths!), shouting match with some Ukrainian wannabe-toughguy convinced that "sit by the window" means "I take both seats," and because logistics trumps logic, had stop in Wrocław. Not to scale, but it's kinda like going from New York to Atlanta through Chicago. Yeah, yeah, I know, you Americans no doubt have your stories about overnight driving a pickup you found in a lake from Oregon to Maine or some shit, but I for me this was an Odyssey.

Might expand more, but I need to go back to my office hours. Take care, everyone!

It made me remember an article I read in 2015 which claimed that plants should be purple, because green light carries the most energy (and green plants reflect green light).

Then maybe they should be black and absorb all visible light? No. Producing pigment is quite energy intensive, so alternatives mainly pop where a niche forms due to competition for resources. That's why brown and red algae are a thing the deeper you go, as with depth the composition of light changes to that of blue and green. And because the light intensity changes as well, efficiency needs become dominant.

In any case, plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis. And it makes a lot of sense, intuitively. Even in lab-scale chemistry it's often advantageous to take a longer process at lower temperature to obtain, for example, higher yield or optimise for a specific isomer or what have you.

Back in the day, all the tiny light-eating lifeforms were purple. Being more efficient overall, the “purple gang” greedily sucked down all the light they could get, and grew and multiplied as quickly as possible.

"Back in the day" was about 2.4-2.6 billion years ago, and the oxygen wasn't even remotely as abundant in the atmosphere or water as it was after the Great Oxygenation Event, so creating purple retinal:

was preferable since it only needs one oxygen atom per molecule. Chlorophyll, varied as it is, needs at least 5-6 times as much, and even more of it for it to be produced with any level of certainty because of reagent proximity being ruled by thermodynamics and statistics. While on that, the composition of the atmosphere was different and there was no ozone layer, so that life was bathing in a lot more UV than it does today. The author compares apples with oranges, to put it coyly.

EDIT: Some style/grammar corrections, added a few facts.

I convinced three people to get vaccinated. Dunno what happened, but I noticed people in general are finally listening to what I have to say instead of just assuming it can't be worth their time and dismissing it seemingly before I even stop talking. Then again, I gained a lot of bulk over the last year and a half, so maybe they're finally intimidated enough to stop treating me like that. Either way, fun.

Some skills, apparently, just evaporate if left unpracticed. It's like my brain completely lost any juggle-related wiring and downgraded from casually dealing with four balls in high school to barely able to swap two.

I found How to read a book by M.J. Adler while trawling card catalogues over weekend, and it's an honestly good guide for becoming a more demanding reader. I'm experimenting with some of the advice, like writing in my books as I read to see if it does anything (yes, I remember that post about reading with a pen), though it's still kind of a mental block against ruining it. I have some textbook on knot theory where the margins are filled with stuff that's simultaneously distractingly superficial and straight-up wrong half the time, and on a lowkey anxiety level I wouldn't want that to be the impression of me. Humorously, How to... dwells a lot and falls into reiterating same thing numerous times in slightly different contexts/complications, but I suppose it's a way of hammering the point home.

Also while looking for books, I scored an eight volume, hardback series on painters, their works, and general art critique for a price of a sub sandwich. It was still in cellophane and the 'new book' smell is overwhelming despite them being about my age. The literal title would be White Man's Paintings (Malarstwo Białego Człowieka), and I'd probably leave it at that since there likely isn't a more idiomartic word for "Europe and northward of Panama."

I'm in this shock-like state where time perception doesn't exist. It's usually preceeded by something bad, and having it as a standalone feeling of flow is very alien. Last time I was like that, my father died and the last three months were a blur. It's hard to disassociate the state and memory, especially when everything feels immensely absorbing.

This happens.

My sleep cycle is all kinds of horrid for the last month, and it was never too healthy to begin with. Changed medication but this time took second opinion because holy shit it's like the goal went from getting me out of languid stupor though making sure I feel fine and energized to assuring I feel constant discomfort. All those tiny annoyances, from yawning and dry mouth to faux-alertness and impaired reflexes, won't make me stop medicating, but come the fuck on, I still don't get why it had to be changed in May despite multiple pleas for explanation. From that point, it's been progressively worse for no apparent reason. Hopefully, I'll get to go back to old meds, because the way I feel right now I could use either sedatives for uninterrupted chunk of sleep or meth for exhausting me into collapse. Either's fine. If this will continue, not my state but poor communication, I'll simply change a doctor to someone whose only mode of conversation isn't "ETHOS, BITCH!"

Still, I'm moving steadily on with my work, so that's something. Adviser told me to start drafting some of the stuff that's unlikely to change, so everyone's standard chapters 1-3 (intro, theoretical basis, research motivation). The others are now a background noise.

While I can only bow to c_hawkthorne's conciseness and candour, it's been a challenging and emotionally draining week. Lots of work drama, too. I can't wait to be out of that stupid project.

Home is starting to look homely. Taking the rest of the week off because of epic muscle soreness.

I'm kinda annoyed with how classical languages are taught. There's practically no effort directed at conversation, which, sure, I'm not gonna meet any Romans, but that's how people acquire languages better. Nobody teaches introductory Spanish or German by forcing down tables of terminations with intention of translating Cervantes or Goethe by the end of the year, at least nobody who retains students, so why is Latin and Greek so often stuck in the XIXth century? Rethorical question, at least mostly, but a real problem. Right now, I'm mostly using YouTube (he also has two Greek playlists), and wait for my copies of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata and Alexandros to arrive.

The house was left in a terrible state, including two broken windows and the aftermath of it. Gonna change most of those wooden floors, too. Fortunately, barring the heat pump, there's nothing I can't fix on my own, but it'll take a couple more weeks before I can move in. Or, frankly, stay inside without being weirded the fuck out about all the mold. Fucking hell, the fact my mother would rather let it degrade like that than give it under my/brother's care. Also, I cannot find most of the stuff I left there, from diaries to trophies, so that's cool.

It's pretty fucking busy between that and PhD-ing, is what I'm saying. Good thing meds keep working top-notch, and I like working with my hands or figuring out shit like that. Takes out most of my energy, but that's probably for the better. I'd waste it on re-learning 64-bit assembler or whatever other random project pops to mind.

I have nearly finished transcribing, commenting, and (when necessary) correcting those institute materials. It's a goddamned test of character if anything else. It also showed the author as making annoying, silent assumptions or subtle-but-meaningful changes to notation. One situation made me question the utility of it in the first place: it wasn't clear from neither formulae nor context if the mass in question was effective or not. Why does it matter? Well, using a Star Trek-like analogy...

this is a pizza:

and this is effectively a pizza:

In reality, depending on the material you're working on, it could probably account for even as much as six orders of magnitude worth of discrepancy between theory and measurement.

TAing assignments are in: classical mechanics, and mathematical methods workshop -- both done almost entirely remotely. Not gonna lie, CM is one of my all-time favourite courses, so even if unexpected, that's some damn good news to get it.

After another "I know we all want to play but let's shoot shit for the next three hours instead" of an RPG session, I started looking for people online. Thirty hours later I had more than a full complement of players and was knee-deep in drama after opting to let a furry with a great backstory stay and reject some cookie-cutter rogue instead. So, either way, I'm not playing this weekend. Dunno why I keep trying. It's fun, but too rarely survives interfacing with reality for me to put nearly as much effort as I do.

Awesome timing!

Should snap a pic tomorrow, when it'll be an entire day after I cleaned the room.

Could you imagine if they were so weak in the heart and they heard about what's going on with the stock market? We'd have shrews dropping left and right.

Not if they're shrewds.

There've been IRC meetups last silly season during those debates when people comment and vent in real time. Just saying, could be fun.

Pictured: a 3.2 kg projectile gracefully slipping into the air at 6 Mach.

Speaking of changes…

1. Will 'people' tab make a comeback? This place isn't about 'muh stats', but it was a quick way to look-up popular comments/threads.

2. I noticed that there is no way to click on things like "shared posts" or "replies" while going to another user's profile. Functionality is still there, but so were 'people' until this update launched. Will those return in a clickable form?

3. Easy access to Deleted seems to be lacking and I'm kinda certain about suggesting adding it to the profile page a while ago. Seems doable, so why not?

First one is more of a curiosity, the second I find to be sometimes better than search function. Third is just one of those things nobody needs right up until they need it.

Regardless, I appreciate the hell out of all the work you've been doing. Kudos for every minute of it.

I started my physics PhD studies for good, though we had a bunch of orientations/meetings in September. Theoretical/mathematical programme, specialization in condensed matter. It's pretty intense from the very beginning, but everyone's nice, and people seem to be going out of their way to help us accommodate. Got my first research assignment, wandered the institute, managed to hit it off with some of the other freshmen and feel woefully underprepared for my Introduction to Quantum Computing 1 class. Other courses are Modern Physics 1, Quantum Mechanics, and Physics of Condensed Phase, all of which seem less daunting. There's also a mathematical methods workshop we're starting next week, which looks pretty exciting.

Because I'm in a research-centred institute, there are no undergrads around, so we're completing our teaching quotas 'on loan'. I already had my first two sessions as a Physics 1 and Calc 1 TA at the local Polytechnic. Almost all of my students went through the extended maths exam after high school, which simplifies things for me, but I find the pace of Calc 1 to be absolutely ludicrous regardless of their prep. According to the syllabus, students are expected to be able to tackle simple 2nd-order ODE by the end of this semester, which, OK, it's doable, but I don't think it's good for them in the long run. That's like cramming a pile of Schaum's Outlines and about as likely to stick. The Calc 1 lecturer seemed somewhat annoyed when I brought it up during staff meeting, so it's probably best to just make it least confusing to students. Definitely not a fan, though.

My stipend is nothing to brag about, but it's also almost twice what I had during masters, which means no more moonlighting. I'm pretty stoked about that.

I also had to resign from chemistry. Not what I wanted, but the option of completing studies 'part-time' has suddenly become reserved for single parents ("mothers, preferably") and invalids. It's good to know they'd rather lose a good student than use those vaguely-worded-on-purpose rules to make my life a tad easier. Though that's also the same place that figured using me instead of setting up an automated dripper is more cost-efficient, so it's not like I'm all that surprised. Shame, but I now know reasonably enough to study chemistry on my own from this point onwards. It was never about getting a degree anyway.

I applied for a bunch of research-centred PhD programmes/positions that aren't directly tied to universities. There are surprisingly many of those posted by various governmental agencies looking for physicists, definitely more than what I saw last year, which is one of few good surprises I had over the last few months. This weekend I'll start working on submissions to the Polish Academy of Sciences and similar institutes, which is painstaking, but hopefully worth all the years of effort. That's where I'd like to end up working anyway, but it's best to cover as many bases as possible.

Had to double my hours at the carwash to make sure I'll have enough money for this summer, which is starting to take its toll. I'm fairly certain that I developed some sort of skin allergy to the crap we handle, but it's not like I'm in a position to look for something better. At least this time I planned things in such a way that I might catch some break around August, so that's nice.

Also, Organic Chemistry is the only course I ever took where my grade from labs is significantly better from theory. Feels weird.

That's way classier than what I'd do, which would be copying and pasting those links into response email and adding "here, have them."

One of the student newspapers wants to interview me as "the student responsible for three separate uni-wide regulation changes". Talk about notoriety.

No need to talk anymore, my fellow Marks. The outsiders are gone. Both.

Apparently, I'm the most triggering facet of mk's personality.

So, I guess everyone should write about currently read books, right?

- Art of Attack in Chess by L. Vukovic. I'm rereading this book because it just kicks all kinds of arse when it comes to dissecting strategies. It's one of those "every time you read it, you get more out of it" types of texts. It's not without its flaws, as far as intermediate books on chess go, it's very worth recommending.

- The Story of Civilisation, Part III: Caesar and Christ by W. Durant. That's the closest I got to fiction in a while. I'm about to cross the middle point. Not much more to say, but I very much enjoy reading it. Which still surprises me, as I never thought I'd be saying something like that about learning history.

- The Theory of Integral Equations by a whole bunch of Russians. It's as riveting as the title makes it sound. I'll leave it for you to guess whether I'm sarcastic or not.

I wrote it a while ago as sort of a cross between commentary on lazy poems and to boost my own levels of pretentiousness. :P

  Some prose that's
    roundabout,
  with a line
  break
    or
      two,
          your 'tab' key
          abused here
      or	<- there
        and
      crawling
  with s p a c e s
    at random
      p l a c e s,
    is not what

            TRANSFORMS
      it
        into
      the
    Poetry.

- E.E. Devac

Let me guess: too tongue-in-cheek?